Furthermore, companies that
screen by resume may leave out a
substantial number of people who don’t
know how to write a resume or aren’t
skilled at navigating the complexities of
applying for a job, she adds.

With resumes, “we’re judging
people maybe more on their ability
to summarize their career than their
ability to do the actual job,” says Kevin
Parker, CEO of HireVue, a video-interviewing technology vendor.

One of HireVue’s clients, which
is hiring thousands of software
developers, has moved away from the
resume for screening in favor of coding
challenges. “We may look at the resume
as a third step in the process, but at that
point it doesn’t matter where you went
to school—if you can do the work, then
we’re interested in you,” says Parker.

The upshot is that the company
greatly improved its diversity while
eliminating people who had great GPAs
but couldn’t do the actual work, he says.

Parker says he sees companies
turning to alternative methods, such as
structured interviews, video interviews
and coding challenges, because they’re
better predictors of who can do the
actual work.

“Five years from now, you’ll find
someone using resumes and you’ll
think, ‘Oh my gosh, how cute! You still
do it that way,’ ” says Parker.

Resumes Still Predominate

However, despite its flaws, the
resume continues to be the predominant
vehicle for jobseekers and the
recruiters who are screening them.
And it continues to have fans within the
HR profession, Lundberg among them.

The resume is the most concise
summary of a candidate’s skills and
experience, she says.

“I coach everyone who works for
me on this rule: Past performance is a
great predictor of future performance,”
says Lundberg.

Pairing traditional resume
screening with newer tools like social
media can be a very effective way to
screen candidates for consistency,
she says. She cites a candidate who
applied for a business-analyst position
with Combined Insurance. His resume
looked good, but when Lundberg
checked out his LinkedIn profile, much
of it was devoted to a designer-clothing
initiative he was launching.

“It said to me that this man would
not be happy as a business analyst—
his creative passions do not lie in this
role,” she says.

And while critics contend that
resumes can leave candidates open to
unconscious bias over their names or
gender, Lundberg says training—not
eliminating resumes—is the solution.

“We all have unconscious biasesthat we have to check at the door,”“It’s visual evidence of theirmultimedia-storytelling abilities,” saysFord. “It’s like a living resume.”

A Resume-Free Hiring Process

The decision to not accept resumes
was one of the first Detroit Labs’
founders made, says Hughes.

“No. 1, we wanted everyone atthe company to have a say in who wehired,” he says. “Two, if we reliedon standard resumes, we’d have ahard time being able to consistentlycompare candidates.”Instead, candidates fill out a detailedquestionnaire created by whicheverteam they’d be working with. Theteams then review the questionnairesand vote on which candidate they’d liketo invite for an interview. Not only doesthe process give employees a say inwho the company hires, says Hughes,“I think Detroit Labs is attemptingto get to know candidates in a differentway,” she says. “Communicationskills aren’t easily discerned froma resume—you can’t tell whethersomeone’s good at persuading oradvancing an argument. You can moreeasily determine that with a question-based approach.”At Lever, Srinivasan uses an on-sitepresentation to assess candidates on avariety of dimensions: Are they clearcommunicators, do they give sufficientcontext upfront, are they aware of theiraudience?

She says she also looks for
“intellectual curiosity,” which she notes
you can’t discern from a resume.

At Bain Consulting, one of
Srinivasan’s previous employers, the
company conducted case interviews in
which candidates were given problems
to solve. The company used them to
get a sense of how candidates think—
did they tackle the problem in a logical
way, do they think in a structured way?

“Resumes are static, reflecting a
fixed point in time, and yet people are
continuously evolving,” she says.

Prioritizing Efficiency

The Des Moines metropolitan area,
where Accumold is located, has an
unemployment rate of just 3 percent
“and I’ve probably interviewed about 2. 5
percent of that 3 percent,” says Swanson.

The 350-employee company, which
was started in a garage 30 years ago,
makes precision parts for “
micro-molding” tiny components out of
plastic—components that can literally
be smaller than a grain of sand, she
says. It’s looking for candidates who
are reliable, detail-oriented and who
want to remain with and grow at
Accumold, says Swanson.

Accumold has invested heavily in
trying to grow talent locally, including
a scholarship program with a nearby
community college in which it pays for
students’ education while they train at
the company to become tool-and-die
makers.

Swanson estimates she spends about30 seconds reviewing each resume shereceives and finds them inefficient.“There’s just so much non-value-addedinformation on a resume,” she says.“And there’s more than a few resumesI’ve seen where the information didn’thold up on the background checks.”“When you’ve got hundreds ofpeople applying and 90 percent aren’tqualified, that’s a lot of wasted effort,”she says.

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this story to hreletters@lrp.com.

Labs from those who may be simply
going through the motions.

“If someone applies to work here,
we know they’ve spent at least 15
minutes to an hour getting to know
us and applying to us, rather than
just pushing a button to send us their
resume,” he says.

The questions, which are reviewed
by the company’s lawyer, are designed
to determine a candidate’s technical
skills and also to give a sense of who
the person is and how he or she thinks,
says Hughes. Not all candidates are
thrilled with the process, he admits,
but it helps the teams get to know
them better. It’s also important for the
company to explain to candidates why
the no-resume process is critical to
Detroit Labs’ decision-making.

“I think it’s been an outstanding
way for us to avoid the ‘like being
comfortable with like’ problem we’ve
seen in the tech industry,” he says,
citing the tendency of Silicon Valley
hiring managers to go with candidates
whose resumes reflect their own
backgrounds.

A “Lot of Wasted Effort”

The resume simply doesn’t tell
recruiters enough about the character
and qualities of a candidate to
determine his or her success, says

Leela Srinivasan, chief marketingofficer for recruitment firm Lever.“Think of the modern workplace—so much rests on the character of theindividual and their ability to workcollaboratively in teams,” she says,citing a top-performing salespersonat a previous employer who was firedbecause the person’s actions were notin line with the company’s values. “Youcould look great on paper, but resultsaren’t everything.”Srinivasan says she’s intrigued byDetroit Labs’ resume-free approach.Lever has worked with othercompanies that moved away fromresumes, she says, such as KeepSafe,RES UME